What do you need to know about ‘responsive content marketing’?

At the moment, content is universal. You do some research, get the lightbulb moment and then write an article. You publish this to the web and, hey presto, it’s available on desktop, tablet and smartphone.

The content itself will soon be responsive though. Text will actually change depending upon the device. Content will adjust automatically just as a responsive website would adjust to the device it is being displayed on.

Articles will be much shorter and concise on small mobile screens, with more bullet points. On desktop, the full version will be available.

Content needs to be responsive in order to serve users better.

Some apps have already gained popularity in this sphere. Yahoo! bought Summly which is kind of an app version of responsive content marketing.

Duplicated content

With all these versions of responsive content how will search engines deal with duplicate content issues? Well, the answer lies in Google’s latest developments – artificial intelligence (AI) and RankBrain.

Google will soon be able to discover strong entity connections between content and keywords. As content is published it will note the devices too. Engines will know that content is from one domain and it has various versions for each device, just like a responsive web site. It will then plug this information into its 3D index, which Panda already sits on.

Why would search engines invest in responsive content?

Publishers and technology companies have united to form faster loading mobile webpages in a project called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). This is a step in the right direction for mobile. Our attention span is much shorter on mobile because of the busy environment we are often in when we are holding the device. Responsive content marketing aids this.

Responsive content marketing will truly segment and personalise the mobile journey to create an even more comfortable experience.

Google has recently got clever with mobile by adding Tap Now to Google Now. Google Now is based on picking up on searches on multiple devices.

The next addition of Tap Now would be to add a responsive content layer so we can, at the hit of a button, pick up on content on the device of our choice and to enable content to be efficiently rendered on that device for the greatest possible user experience.

With Google’s clear support for mobile, it is only natural that this mining of content will merge with mobile: ‘responsive content marketing.’

I wrote this article to trigger some industry thoughts. Please share yours below.